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Monday, July 6, 2015

Turn Left Past Yonder

Elder Jones and Wyatt

This week can be summed up in a single story, which I will explain: So it starts exactly 8 days ago, last Sunday. One of the members of our branch says that he has some cousins of his that want to start learning with our church. So they came to church (there were three of them: an Om, a 21 year old girl, and a 16 year old boy), and we asked them for their phone number and where they lived. When they told us where they lived, they said the Phum name (basically, the neighborhood name) and said it was down the highway.

Jump to tuesday. At 1pm--after district meeting and doing service at our Branch Presidents house--we asked somebody where this Phum was, and they just said it was down the national road, just like the family said. So we figured we would just ride down the national road and keep asking people along the way until we got to their Phum. Also, there were some ruins on the way, so we thought we could just take a break there and take some pictures. We started out, got a kilometer down the road, got some water, and just to be sure, we asked the guy where this Phum was. He said the same thing, but then he was like, "Are you really taking your bikes?" To which we were like "Yeah, why not?" He told us it was really far, but he didn't tell us exactly how far. So we just kept riding until we got to the ruins and saw a couple of weird signs on the way (like a sketchy cardboard sign in the middle of no where that said "Pizza 2Km ---->" down a really crappy dirt road. haha). But anyways, when we got there, we walked up to the ruins and there was a security guard there that stopped us and asked us where our pass was. We didn't know what he was talking about, so he explained--apparently there is a pass that you have to get to see ANY of the ruins that costs like 60 bucks... So then we got booked it out of there because that's ridiculous.

Elder Jones

By this point we had already ridden about 15 kilometers from the city and still hadn't gotten to this phum. We kept riding and talked to one more person, and he said we still had 30 Km to go....so we just looked at the ground for a sec, then scratched our heads, and called a van over (they take people from Siam Reap to huge factories about 50 miles away every day) and told them we would pay them 6 dollars to take us to this Phum. So we hopped in. This van was packed with people. I wanted to get a picture of how many people there were, but I couldn't even reach my pocket to get my camera because I was so squished. So then we kept riding in this car for a straight 30 more minutes going like 60 miles an hour (probably would have been about another 5 hours by bike haha!). We got off at this phum, got our bikes off the van, and called the investigator, who told us where we were was about 3 kilos too far. ha. So then we biked back 3 more kilos until we met the 16 year old boy whose name is--I kid you not--Dollar (like 5 dollar bill).

Frog legs

Anyways, we get to their house and find out that the combination of elder Jones quiet voice mixed with the Om having a hearing problem was not a good combination, so I got to step in with my super loud voice quite a bit. They really want to get baptized and said they would go to church every week (they went yesterday for both sessions of church), so we gave them a baptismal date. The lesson was super good, and my overly energetic self told them we could come back once a week to see them, which maybe I shouldn't have done because they are so far, but Elder Jones just shrugged and said it sounded like fun. Haha. Then we had them pray and we left.

Siam Reap

By now it was almost 6.5 hours of biking back? Not really an option. Cars coming back from the factories? None. Just doing whatever? Alright. So we started biking back since we didn't really know what to do. We took a bunch of pictures of the rice fields and palm trees and people and water buffalo and sunsets--all while always watching for a chance that a car would be driving back. So we just kept going and it was probably 6:45 when we saw a car way behind us in the distance. When it got to us, we waved him down and asked him if he was going to Siam Reap, the city. He said, "Yes," and told us to get in (like he knew who we were). So we got in and sat in the back for 30 minutes, as he took pot-holed roads going way too fast, and arrived safely back at our church building in time to have another lesson at 7:15.

Cambodian sunset

'Twas a good day.

Peace out till next week.

John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

(I think it's kind of funny that Jesus literally peaced out his disciples.)